been working hard all week. but it’s friday. and tonight … i’m gonna do it right, baby … oh yeah …. i’m going to treat you so well … hold me close … we’re gonna make such sweet, sweet love … oh yes … i’ll put on that luther vandross CD you like … yes … then i’ll light some candles … gonna be so good … mmm hmmm … just you and me … make it special … yes, just like that … tonight it’s on … just don’t let me forget to close the window blinds … oh no! a camera!!!
golly. i tried to warn you that cobra creative would be unleashing their creative power onto the internet pretty soon. now it’s too late - behold the cobra creative site relaunch - crushing all with the power of a fantastic new website design and potent portfolio. and soon, more white hot artistic venom - cobrabrand.com. not many flash websites are built so well that they load as quick as the cobra creative site, contain so much content, and are bookmarkable (yes, it’s true). best designers i know. so why haven’t you hired them yet?
drink unlimited amounts of beer and battle breast cancer - both at the same time. sounds dreamy, right? well, it’s happening! the sixth annual fermenting change: microbreweries battling breast cancer will take place on saturday, july 15, 2006 at the marin brewing company (map) on larkspur landing from 12 noon to 5pm. all proceeds benefit the Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic (CMCC). there will be over 20 local microbreweries with their finest beer, live music, outdoor barbeque, and a prize raffle. tickets are $25 at the door, $20 advance. View & print a large JPG flyer of the event or you can download a hi-res PDF flyer to print as well. thanks for the info, cari!
dig these awesome macro photography shots of bugs and critters and the like from this russian macro photography page. don’t know much about the page or the photographer (found the link via metafilter) but i do like the macro images! simple layout too.
finally america grasps the concept of yoga! dude - it’s yoga .. yoga for dudes, dude! deep spiritual practice be gone with this addition to the non-working out workouts, a.k.a coyote ugly yoga. dude, it feels like i’m watching an SNL skit & waiting for the will ferrel voice over. i’m a big fan of the ass n’ titties, but dude, hello! this might be sexy if it wasn’t for it’s inherent retardedness. and yes dude, there’s more! is it safe to do yoga with so much silicone packed in your chest? i’d better watch it again to make sure it really is dumb. jerry bruckheimer, dude, you’re next movie premise is waiting …
wow. rad little article on wired found via boingboing on the ‘UFO hacker’ gary mckinnon. be sure to read UFO hacker tells what he found on gary mckinnon’s search for proof of the existence of UFOs. here’s a great excerpt:
I also got access to Excel spreadsheets. One was titled “Non-Terrestrial Officers.” It contained names and ranks of U.S. Air Force personnel who are not registered anywhere else. It also contained information about ship-to-ship transfers, but I’ve never seen the names of these ships noted anywhere else.
it gets better. keep in mind gary mckinnon is facing extradition to the USA for hacking into NASA & is looking at 70 years in prison and a possible $2 million fine. yikes. also, googling gary mckinnon brings up all sorts of pages. some good interviews are scapegoat or public enemy?, where gary talks about the USA’s lack of cyber-security, as is hackers fear UFO cover-up (with a link to an audio interview too) and game over. if i were smoking pot right now, i might be freaking out. luckily, i am just drinking nyquil. so all is safe.
a link sent in from my friend leigh, there’s a brand new history lesson about america’s first president, george washington. not just that old ‘i cannot tell a lie/chop down the cherry tree’ bullshit. no. this was important stuff. like how he rode a crystal horse, grew to 12 stories tall, invented cocaine. lots of stuff. just watch brad neely’s animation below and learn …
perhaps one of the most succint, well worded, and incredibly informative essays i have read covering election fraud in the 2004 election is some might call it treason: an open letter to salon written by mark crispin miller. mark crispin miller’s letter was also published on the huffington post, which has more outgoing links to relevant topics. whichever you choose, it’s a great read. why people are afraid to talk about this (and the 2000 election) is really baffling.
someone has gone to a lot of trouble to document a lot of cool illustrations all in one place. please visit the wonderful blog bibliodyssey when you get a chance. take your time. lots to see. i found bibliodyssey via a boing-boing post about surrealist illustrations done by françois desprez for the book Gargantua and Pantagruel. here are two must see posts: pantragruel I and pantragruel II. lovely & freaky illustrations! also, check out the post figuratively speaking. it has an outside link to the digital collections from the library of congress on the rare book Bizzarie Di Varie Figure. so great! the post on arthur rackham is also nice. it just keeps going! bibliodyssy is a gold mine!
probably my favorite email this last month went a little something like this:
Hey bitches, just a little ditty I did in april. enjoy! - James
very nice. short & sweet. but, it also had a 6 megabyte attachment that said ‘Pics from Bigfoot 2 attached.’ so please enjoy some photos of a little ditty starring the mighty james cotner as the mighty bigfoot (or teen wolf, whatever).
time to escape reality (or at last earth’s orbit) and travel to mars with these amazing pics of apollinaris paldera - an ancient volcano on mars. lots of hi-res jpegs & tiffs and a map too. if you still need more mars, no worries. the european space agency site has some great wallpapers to get mars on your desktop.
i guess political posts are back. dammit. so, everyone at this point should start assuming that what they email they send can and will be read by a government agency. i’m going back to old fashioned letter writing after reading this article: treasonous devices - weapons of mass surveillance. and there’s more links here under bush’s warrentless domestic surveillance. for the life of me, i can’t believe our country is doing this to it’s citizens. yet it is. it really is. and it’s being excused by our representatives and no investigation is going forward. none. fucking ridiculous. if nothing is wrong, why is everyone getting and gearing up for preemptive pardons? sad sad sad.
do you like arthropods? then you will enjoy this insect photography website by richard seaman that is buggy for bugs. great for reference or just checking out cool images of insects. like beetles, caterpillars, spiders, and such. links of note are his sections such as the spiders of vietnam (yikes!), the lovely dragonflies of fiji, and back to vietnam & some butterflies.
interesting article on how pixar reduced rendering time for each frame of the movie Cars from 10 hours to 1 hour. seems they solved it by switching from their “woefully inadequate” NFS (network file system) to a much more practical solution - a linux based SAN (storage area network). the story was found via digg, which has some interesting posts on the topic. i seem to remember something like that taking place at ILM many moons ago on the podrace sequence for phantom menace. but i believe that was solved by john knoll re-writing some code to speed up rendering times specifically for the podracers. but i could be wrong. i was a modelmaker (practical, not digital) back then … your hi-tec CG world still frightens and confuses me …
happy 6/06/06! it’s supposedly the birthday of the anti-christ today. just a rumor - but there may be some truth to that. just look at the signs. for instance, here’s a big one: tonight (6/06/06!) hear the gaping maw of hell trumpet the impending apocolypse like you’ve never heard it trumpted before with the mighty steven segal playing at the fillmore. coincidence? no! truly and act of satan! another sign? how about radiohead concert tickets scalping for $150 to $400? oh satan! why??!! (big thanks to world’s #1 steven segal fan mokshablog for the concert tip).
behold my gift wrapped house, a.k.a. the termite circus tent of death! though our special time together was brief, dear termites, and the faint sounds of your tiny mandibles chewing away at my home provided an eerie calming white noise that helped me sleep better, i will not miss you.
cool use of technology. i could see this becoming more and more common. check out this story of robots in the classroom: robots keeping hospital-bound boy a presence in his school classes. 13-year-old Achim Nurse suffers from a severe skin rash brought on by a case of bacterial meningitis and must remain bandaged and in a hospital bed until he’s better. Using a pair of robots - one named “Mr. Spike” at his bedside, and another named “Mrs. Candy” in the classroom - Achim can keep up with his schoolwork and his friends for the months he will be hospitalized. Achim can push a button on his control console at his bedside to have his classroom based robot raise it’s hand to answer a question at school. very cool. the program that makes this possible is called PEBBLES (Providing Education By Bringing Learning Environments to Students) and was created by telbotics. read more press about the PEBBLES & Teleprescence program via the telbotics news page.
from the environmental association of nova scotia comes this helpful website: a guide to less toxic products. this guide helps to find & identify products which are least toxic then other brands and items available, ranging from cleaning supplies, mattresses, personal care, and more. link found via treehugger.
wanna see some cool flickr photo sets? yes? good! here are two sets by the same talented & amazing photographer, eyecandyforthebrokenhearted …
this beautiful pic is from the first beautiful set, titled Leonie and the Anachronistic Cat. amazing!
and this lovely pic here is from the equally lovely second set, titled Leonie: Coin Operated Girl. so so great! thanks eyecandyforthebrokenhearted!
science time! from eepybird comes the The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments. a series of beautiful scientific tests that combines 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos (the freshmaker) mints. the results are lovely and messy. and there’s lots of other videos to watch of experiments (or is it experi-mints?) from eepybird as well. well done lads!
… while you can. what is AllofMP3.com? it’s a surprisingly legitimate russian music website, highly & incredibly similar to an apple iTunes music store. the big difference? instead of paying $9.99 per album or .99¢ per song via iTunes, on AllofMP3.com you pay per megabyte of download, or around $2.50 per album and .25¢ per song. and - the mp3s at AllofMP3.com are encoded at a bit rate of 192kbps (that’s higher quality then most music sites who sell at 128kbps). AND - on AllofMP3.com (also unlike other online music services) there are no copyright restrictions or DRM limitations for when, where, with what, & how you can play your music. cha-ching! but it appears that AllofMP3 is the thorn in the side of the online music stores and especially the RIAA and its international puppet organization, IFPI. so much so that they have declared AllofMP3 illegal (but, um, it’s a different country, with different rules ‘n stuff, yes?). and the RIAA and american trade represenatives have threatened to deny russia entry into the World Trade Organization unless russia shuts down AllofMP3.com. crazy! regardless, all this has generated a ton of recent traffic and use for AllofMP3.com with fear of it being shut down. by theway, the RIAA is not about protecting artists. the RIAA is about lawsuits and greed and is afraid of any new technology that will loosen their control of the music & recording industry. regardless, it’s high time i visited AllofMP3.
it’s friday! and it seems to be summer too. time to head down to the lake and get some fishing in! but if you want to actually catch fish, leave this guy at home. please enjoy the fish-less fishing adventures on how not to fish with these bill dance fishing bloopers. he actually says ‘dag-gummit!’ awesome!
for thursday morning, some random images from random parts of my/your/our collective psyche …
